DIVINE TRIADS ON AN ARCHAIC ETRUSCAN FRIEZE PLAQUE FROM POGGIO CIVITATE (Murlo) (Con le taw. I-XII f. t.) On a wooded hill site near the citadel town of Murlo (1), some twenty-five kilometres south of Siena in the heart of Tuscany, excavation by Bryn Mawr College over the past four summers has uncovered a substantial complex of buildings together with a large quantity of architectural terracottas. The buildings, already presented elsewhere (2), date from the Archaic Etruscan period, about the middle of the sixth century B.C. The terracottas, of coarse (1) This study was originally given as part of a seminar on the material from Murlo at Bryn Mawr College in the Fall of 1968. I wish to thank Margaret George Butterworth for the drawing and for extensive ground work done on the frieze as a Senior honors thesis at Bryn Mawr in 1967-8. J. Penny Small, Docent Carl Eric Ostenberg, Professors Georges Dumézil, Einar Gjerstad, Erik Sjöqvist, and Doctor Guglielmo Maetzke, Soprintendente alle Antichità d’Etruria, Florence, were all kind enough to read or discuss various aspects of the paper and offered many useful criticisms and suggestions. Above all, I must record my gratitude to Professor Kyle Μ. Phillips, Jr. of Bryn Mawr College for the oppor- tunity to work with the material over the course of four summers at Murlo and for his unfailing help and guidance on this paper as classroom teacher, field in- structor, and friend. The opinions expressed, needless to say, are entirely my own responsibility. Study photographs of the Murlo friezes were taken by Göran Soderberg; final publication photographs are courtesy of the Florence Archaeolo- gical Museum, where the pieces, recently cleaned, were photographed by Ce- sare Mannucci. Photographs of other material were made possible by funds from the Bryn Mawr College Excavations in Tuscany. Princeton, January 1970. (2) Reports on the excavation may be found in AJA LXXI, 1967, pp. 133-9, pls. 39-46; AJA LXXII, 1968, pp. 121-4, pls. 45-52; AJA LXXIII, 1969, pp. 333-9, pls. 79-84; AJA LXXIV, 1970, pp. 241-4, pls. 51-4; Not Scavi, 1966, pp. 5-17; Not. Scavi, 1969, pp. 38-50; Dialoghi Archeol. I, 1967, pp. 245-7, figs. 39-41; Dialoghi Archeol. II, 1968, pp. 104-6, figs. 1-2. A summary of the first two seasons’ work appeared in Archaeology XXI, 1968, pp. 252-61. In addition, many of the better pieces from the first four seasons are described and illustrated in the cata- logue (Poggio Civitate, Firenze, 1970) of the exhibition held in Florence and Siena under the auspices of the Soprintendenza alle Antichità d’Etruria. 2 4 T. N. Gantz clay and often minimal firing, nevertheless present some outstand- ing workmanship and include akroteria, lateral and raking simas, antefixes, and four different types of frieze reliefs. These last re- present a banquet scene, a horse race, a procession, and a row of standing and seated figures. To answer all the questions raised in connection with them would take far more time and knowledge than is now available. We do not yet know, for example, where the molds for these plaques were made, what stylistic influences affected them, the exact nature of the building they were placed on, or even precisely where on the building each type was placed. Their dating in time is also something of a guess based on relative stylistic factors, though we do have evidence from pottery as well (3), and the four plaques form a stylistic unit with parallels in Korinth and Ionia. But setting these problems aside for the moment, we can at least study the designs of the friezes. Three of them show scenes more or less familiar in the context of Etruscan art; the fourth, that depicting the row of standing and seated figures, presents an unusual icono- graphical system which may prove to be valuable material for the study of Etruscan religion. As yet we have no complete plaque of this type in really good condition; hence several fragments are included among the illustrations(4). The drawing by Margaret George Butterworth {jig 1) was made after close study of several hundred such fragments, and though provisional is substantially correct. Paint may have been used to add additional details: traces of it have been found on two of the other types, though not yet on this one. Moving from right to left, however, on the frieze as we have it, the first fi- gure (tav. I) is seated on a simple type of folding chair (δίφρος όκλαδίας) (5) with his feet on a more elaborate curling stool. He (3) For the pottery cf. AJA LXXI, 1967, pls. 44-5, AJA LXXII, 1968, p. 122, pl. 52, and Not. Scavi, 1969, p. 40, fig. 2. More recent digging has unco- vered several small fragments of Greek ware which support this dating. (4) Cf. AJA LXXII, 1968, p. 123 for the initial description and commentary on the plaque. Mrs. Butterworth’s provisional drawings of all four frieze types may be found in Archaeology XXI, 1968. Of the pieces here illustrated, 68-264 (tav. I) was previously catalogued in less complete form as 67-290 and pub- lished under that number in AJA LXXII, 1968, p. 123, pl. 50, fig. 16; Archaeo- logy XXI, 1968, p. 259; Not. Scavi, 1969, p. 47, fig. 2, 68-295 (tav. II b} was partially published as (A1-2AH in AJA LXXII, 1968, pl. 50, fig. 17. (5) For this type of folding chair cf. G. Μ. A. Ric h t er , The Furniture of Divine Triads on an Archaic Etruscan frieze Plaque 5 is bearded, wears a straight one-piece garment as do all the figures with one exception (the fourth figure), and holds in his right hand a short staff or sceptre whose upper end describes a broad curve in fig. 1 - Murlo: reconstruction drawing of frieze plaque-seated and standing divinities. the manner of a lituus. Between this curved section and the man’s head is a small teardrop-shaped raised area which seems unrelated to the rest of the frieze and which may be an imperfection in the mold. The second figure (tav. II a) stands behind the first, beardless but of uncertain sex (6), holding in the left hand a sword with a curved hilt (7) and in the right hand a spear. Behind him or her is another seated figure, this time clearly a woman, in a very elaborate throne similar to those at Chiusi and Praenes- the Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans, 1966, pp. 43-6. The closest parallel to this particular model is probably that of the two seated men facing each other on the Campana slabs now in the Louvre, for which cf. Μ. Pallottino, Etruscan Painting, 1952, p. 35. (6) While bearded figures are presumably male, the presence of beardless male riders on the horse race type frieze (tav. IV a) is ample warning against the assumption that all male figures must be bearded. Nor is the appearance of very slight modeling of the breast on some figures sufficient evidence that only these figures are female. (7) A similar type of sword appears on the stele of Larthi Aninies from Pomarance near Volterra. Cf. L. A. Mil a n i, Italici ed Etruschi, Atti Soc. per il progresso delle scienze, 1908-9, pp. 237-59, pl. XVI fig. 72. 6 T. N. Gantz te (8). Her head is covered by a close-fitting hood, and her left hand holds out her cloak at arm’s length from the top of her head. The right hand holds a stalk with some rounded object (a fruit or flower?) at the end. Her footstool curls down into straight legs and is perhaps even more elaborate than that of the man in front of her. The fourth figure stands behind the third with a fan in one hand and some sort of bag or situla in the other. The mo- deling of the breast identifies her as a woman also; she is of course beardless and her garment is belted at the waist. Com- parison should be made here with the garments and equipment of the two figures following the wagon in the procession frieze (tav. IV b). Clearly the same type of iconography has been used here to identify a similar attendant figure. The fans in both cases, moreover, resemble types found in tombs at Populonia (9). The fifth, sixth, and seventh figures (tav. Ill b) are all shown seated on simple folding chairs like that of the first figure, but with simpler rectangular footstools of varying dimensions. All have their left hand extended, palm up; the fifth and seventh figures clasp in their right hands branches with a fruit which may be the pomegranate (in the case of the seventh figure the fruit is almost certainly pomegranates). The sixth figure, on the other hand, is clearly bearded and holds in his right hand what is unmistakeably a double axe. The best parallel seems to be the fasces-axe. from Vetulonia (10). The eighth figure stands; he is beardless and of indeterminate sex, like the second, fifth, and seventh figures. In his left hand he holds a long staff on which he appears to lean; its upper end forks out into two separate branches which then curve down. Thus briefly we have the Murlo assembly frieze. Its closest (8) For the Chiusi throne cf. Ducati, A. E., pl. 70, fig. 210; for the Bar- berini chair from Praeneste, Ducati, A. E., pl. 37, fig. 125. (9) For example, the Tomba dei Flabelli di bronzo of the late seventh οι early sixth century.